Frozen Again

I am on vacation this week, and I have few plans other than drowning myself in Golden Age detective fiction. This morning I thought I’d advance toward the revelation of the culprit in Harriet Rutland’s superb Knock, Murder, Knock!, but I fell asleep not once but twice as I tried to read. These naps were of the dreamless variety, so even my subconscious mind didn’t help me in revealing further details of the plot.

I’ve been digging into these Golden Age (1920’s-1930’s) narratives not so much for their well-crafted plots but for period details. I’m not sure why I’m finding these fictional worlds so comforting. This was a time when meritocracy ran a distant second to lucky accidents of birth, and I have no wish whatsoever for the world to revert back to its socioeconomic terms (e.g., heaven forbid that dressing up for dinner become a trend again). Maybe in these pages I am finding some constants of the human condition amid the relatively baroque decor and fashion. No matter how many layers of clothing we must wear, the heart still covets and the will within may fail, yet we adapt and survive. In these fictional worlds, there is the hangman’s noose awaiting those who cannot remake themselves in the face of life’s defeats.

Onto the weather . . . another Alberta Clipper dropped a few inches of snow. Now that the snow has finished falling, the temperatures are drifting to zero degrees again. I tried shovelling some snow this morning, but early afternoon wind gusts undid my work. My husband ventured outside with the leaf blower to clear off some walking paths:

The dogs next door were out just long to do their duty and bark at us:

I think the hound on the right is asking me why I’m outside when my toilet, unlike his, is indoors.